


In the beginning, there was...

by AndyAO3, potionsmaster



Series: Teddy Shepard Is A Little Shit [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Backstory, Drabble, Gen, basically it's some origin story nonsense for Teddy Shepard, earthborn renegon custom Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 04:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3796984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3, https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionsmaster/pseuds/potionsmaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The origins of the tiny shithead Shepard.</p>
<p>May add more later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the beginning, there was...

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to PM for helping with this one! Apologies for my bad Spanish.

The kid was small. Too small, Taggart thought, to do much more than die. Big grey eyes - like a cloudy sky just before a summer storm - were sunken, making them seem even bigger. His joints and bones jutted out at every visible angle. His age was impossible to tell, and with lack of food taken into account it could be anything. A layer of dirt and grime from the dirty slush that the plows would kick up also did little to hide that the kid was almost as white as fresh snow, with red fingers and hands from the cold.

Taggart could see that the kid wouldn't last long in a Chicago winter on his own. But this was his turf, and the kid was a trespasser. Buck and Rat had already come around to flank the intruder, and some of the other boys were circling too; by his decent clothes, the kid had just come out of The System. That meant he probably had something worth stealing even if he was a runt.

"Got some nerve comin' onto our turf, tiny," Taggart said. A couple of the boys snickered darkly. The kid just straightened his posture, all defiance and fighting spirit; the boys would enjoy beating it out of him. Taggart wasn't cruel, but some of his boys were, and that was what made him the leader and them the underlings.

The kid's chin jutted out as the muscles in his jaw tightened. "I'm not afraid of you pissbabies."

Taggart gave a low whistle. The kid's voice hadn't broken yet, so that put his age a couple of years lower than the initial estimate. Which meant that either he was too stupid to know what he was getting into, too suicidal to care, or he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by challenging a gang leader.

Judging by the kid's twiggy frame, the first signs of frostbite on his fingers, and the clear, fierce intelligence in those eyes, Taggart would bet every credit he had on the latter.

"Midget's got a mouth on him, huh?" Taggart said aloud to the boys. He almost felt bad giving such a scrawny kid a beatdown, but rules were rules, and Taggart wasn't gonna earn respect with his boys by breaking them for every miserable sumbitch who came along looking pathetic. "Let's show him how we treat mouthy li'l _pendejos_ who come onto our turf."

He gestured at the kid, and Buck charged.

Buck was a big fourteen year old. Kids like him in the holo-vids, usually they were on sports teams. They dated cheerleaders, and were presented as bullies. Most of the time, bullies in vids had some reason to be a bully. Buck didn't. He was just a big dopey asshole.

What Taggart expected was for Buck to give the kid a beating to within an inch of his life, that made it so Taggart could pull the nice guy card and say they'd let him run back to his mommy and daddy if he gave up everything he owned. It was a good plan, and it'd worked before. Once Taggart had even gotten a stolen credit chit out of it and been able to buy some of the boys new clothes.

He did not expect the kid to glow blue, and for Buck to go flying into a snowdrift.

Taggart froze for a second, his mind racing. He glanced at the rest of his boys; some were staring at Buck, some were staring at the kid. Rat was looking straight at him though. Waiting for orders.

"Don't just sit there, dumbass!" Taggart yelled, waving a hand in the direction of the kid. Rat nodded, and went as directed.

Rat was lean and mean, all lines and angles. He had a narrow, sharp face, bad teeth, and sharp eyes. He was Taggart's best scrapper because he fought dirty.

It didn't matter a bit to the kid. Rat didn't get within two feet of him before being tossed aside like a ragdoll with another flicker of blue light.

From there, no one else acted on orders. All of the other boys who had been circling - along with Buck, who was heaving himself back up and looking pissed - rushed in to try and overwhelm the kid. This upstart, this scrawny little fucker, was not going to get the best of them.

With a sound like a thunderclap and something almost like a roar from the kid, every last one of them was blown back in a single flash of blue. There in the middle of the chaos, standing in something that the melted once-hardpacked snow made to resemble a crater, was the kid. Breathing hard, clutching the center of his chest, while the other hand wiped at a bloody nose and the blue light licked at his skin and clothes like a sputtering flame.

He was looking directly at Taggart. Still defiant, still daring him to try something. Taggart had the sudden thought that those eyes weren't grey like an overcast sky, like he'd originally thought. No, they were more like steel, cold and hard and inflexible.

Taggart realized he was scared when it occurred to him that he, too, was breathing hard, with sweat sticking his loose shirt to his skin. He had to grin at that; a scrawny kid had just taken out every fighter in his gang, and scared him shitless.

"Not bad for a midget," Taggart said. "Somebody drop you in bleach as a baby, midget?"

"Shouldn't call other people shit when you look like somebody grabbed you by both ends and stretched you," the kid replied.

Taggart laughed quietly. Still a mouthy little shit, wasn't he? "Got a name, _cabrón_?"

The kid grinned cheekily at the compliment. "Ted."

"You got a place to rest your head, Teddybear?" Taggart asked, and that cheeky grin got wider.

"That an offer?"

"Think of it like a trial run. You earn your keep, you keep your bed and your food, _sabe_?"

Ted's eyes got a little glint in them at the mention of food, and Taggart knew he'd hooked the kid. "Sold."

 


End file.
